


Homecoming

by Tibby



Category: Treasure Planet (2002)
Genre: Alien Gender/Sexuality, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 12:39:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17043899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tibby/pseuds/Tibby
Summary: Delbert and Amelia are expecting their first litter. Maybe it's finally time to give up adventuring and settle down.





	Homecoming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Settiai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Settiai/gifts).



In a quiet spot by the sea, on the planet of Montressor, the windows of a fine old house cast a warm light into the ocean mist. If anyone had been around to see them, they might have looked with mild surprise, as the windows of the doctor’s house had not been lit for the past two years. As it was, there were no eyes to witness and no tongues to remark on either the lit windows or the sleek craft anchored beside the building.

Inside, the house’s robot staff were finally busy again. The whir of wheels and the tapping of metallic feet could be heard echoing down every corridor - which had been a rare occurrence even in the good old days when the doctor had been at home.

“Doppler’s always been fussy, yes,” one maid remarked to another, “But he’s easy enough to deal with. I don’t know how we’ll do with _her._ ”

The other maid beeped and whirred in agreement. However, they quickly fell silent as they heard a voice carrying clearly from a few rooms down the hall. The two maids scuttled away in opposite directions.

“I am aware you have your methods, Mr. Butler,” the voice sounded, “And you have your standards too. But now that I’m responsible for this malodorous wreck I’m going to have to call home, it’s my standards that you’ll have to meet. Is that understood, Mr. Butler?”

“Understood, Mrs. Doppler,” said the butler meekly. He was already a fraction of the new mistress’ height but he shrank a further few inches as he caught a dangerous look in her eye.

“I beg your pardon?” said Amelia with a start.

“I said that I understood, Mrs. Doppler.”

This time, the words seemed to produce a dazing effect. Amelia gathered herself quickly. 

“Oh, yes, of course,” Amelia shook her head. She gave the robot an apologetic pat on his dome, “I’m sorry. That name still takes me by surprise sometimes… In any case, I’m sure you’ll have this place shipshape in no time at all, Mr. Butler. I won’t tolerate anything less.”

The butler wheeled out of the room, leaving Amelia alone. She was not a woman who took many moments to pause but for a while she stood still and wondered. On the walls, the family portraits of dour-faced strangers stared past her. She allowed herself to feel a little overwhelmed by their stately smugness. The dust gathering on their frames only seemed to secure them in their plush surroundings, while she, still with the whiff of the Aether on her, was the outsider. Amelia hadn’t really had a place to call home since she left the Interstellar Academy. Since then, she had devoted herself to whichever ship she served on, spending the few planet-bound days in between commissions lodging in boarding houses or the attic rooms of relatives. She honestly hadn’t imagined herself having a house of her own until she was forced to retire.

There was no point wasting valuable thoughts on such piffle, however. Marriage, thus far, had proved itself to be a grand adventure, and establishing herself and Delbert in this house was just the latest challenge. For the time being, she was the captain of this residence.

She had just decided that her next task would be to inspect the bathrooms when a bell rang. She stepped over to the room’s communicator and checked the panel. The call was coming from the bedroom.

“Yes, Delbert, my love?”

“Ah! Amelia! I’ve finally caught up with you. I think I’ve called every communicator in the house.”

“Is everything all right?” said Amelia, the slightest hint of alarm rising in her voice, “Nothing’s happened, has it? You’re feeling well?”

“What?” the crackling communicator voice replied, “Oh yes, nothing to worry about. It’s just that you said you were going to make a cup of tea and, well, that was more than an hour ago.”

Amelia muttered a curse under her breath. _That_ was what she had meant to do. On her way she had stopped to show a maid how one should really scrub a floor and, from there, one thing had led to another until she had been irreversibly distracted.

“One minute more, my love,” she assured Delbert, “You shall have tea, cake, biscuits – nothing will be spared.”

 

In reality, Amelia was a little longer than a minute. On the way to the kitchen, she took the opportunity to open a few doors she hadn’t opened yet. One of them turned out to be a broom cupboard, another a pantry, another… she didn’t know what, but it was mostly filled with chairs. The fourth and most promising looking door, however, opened onto a room which was all at once as familiar to her as an old friend.

The library. Delbert had spoken about it enough times that she had sometimes thought she’d already seen it. Now it appeared before her like a dream become real – although, like all dreams touched by reality, it was rather dim and colourless. In Delbert’s telling, of course, the lights were always lit and the fire roaring and the furniture was not covered by dust sheets.

Amelia took a volume at random from a nearby shelf. She was not a great one for reading, herself. Occasionally she found it pleasant to get lost in a book of naval strategy for a half-hour, but generally she was not the type for sedentary pleasures. Books had finally found an importance for her in the importance they held for Delbert.

_Tea,_ an inner voice prompted her.

Amelia emerged from her reverie. Before she left, she turned on the lights and dimmed them to a pleasant, cosy glow.

On her way out, she stopped a passing robot, saying: “You there! Have the fire in the library lit. I want that room so warm butter would melt on the metal fixings.”

 

Delbert had thought he was used to being comfortable. He had spent his whole life being comfortable, more or less, until he had gone on the expedition to Treasure Planet. After that, there had been some changes but they had all happened so fast that he had barely noticed them. He had expected to return home and feel… well, at home. He hadn’t. At least, not immediately. He was beginning to feel at ease again but it was different to before. In a way, it wasn’t until he had experienced his old way of life that he realised how much he had changed.

Amelia, on the other hand, was a wonderful thing to behold. He admitted to himself – though never to her – that he had harboured doubts whether she would be suited to an academic’s humdrum life. The thing was, though, Amelia didn’t allow it to be humdrum – she treated the house like she would any ship. He believed that was why she seemed to take to housekeeping as easily as she took to the Aetherium. She was perched on the arm of his favourite chair, glowing with an aura of firelight. In Delbert’s half-awake state, she seemed like a vision. One of the Spirits of the Aether he remembered reading about as a child.

The touch of her fingers deprived him of the fancy. She gave his distended stomach a rub.

“Are you comfortable, dear?” she asked.

“Mmm, oh yes,” Delbert replied sleepily.

Amelia poured a fresh cup of tea. She placed it in Delbert’s hands and then leant close to his stomach.

“You never kick for me,” she said, addressing the bump, “You had better pay your Mama a bit more attention once you’re out in the world.”

“They will,” Delbert murmured, “Who couldn’t?”

Amelia turned her attention from Delbert’s baby bump to his face, cupping his cheek in one hand and giving him a swift kiss.

“Can I get you anything else?” she asked.

Delbert looked around him. The fire was roaring, the entire silver tea service was primed and ready on the side table. Amelia had even arranged a stack of books for him within easy reach. He couldn’t imagine what else he could possibly ask for.

“Maybe something to eat?” Amelia continued, “How about I make your favourite Alponian chowder – with the extra solara seed?”

Delbert was so tranquilised by the tender care that his wife was bestowing that he almost missed the significance of these words. The cogs in his head were turning slowly, but they were still turning. Several moments passed before he swallowed his sip of tea with a pained gurgle and blurted, “But you can’t cook!”

Seeing his wife’s look, he qualified this with: “You’ve never cooked in all the time I’ve known you!”

“I’m certain I can cook,” Amelia fired back, “I just haven’t tried before now. You sit right there and I’ll bring you the best blasted meal you’ve ever had.”

 

When Amelia had gone, Delbert found himself wondering.

_Two years,_ he thought, _It’s been two years since I last sat in this room._

In one way, it felt like he had been gone no time at all. In another, it felt like he’d lived a densely packed lifetime since then.

 

***

 

_Two years earlier._

When they had landed at the Montressor Space Port, following the expedition to Treasure Planet, Delbert had assumed his adventuring was at an end. It had been his intention to return home from there. Only there had been a nagging sense of a loose end left hanging. After all, the most romantic moment of his life had come at that second when he had first held Amelia. But that had been in a rush of relief, the exhilaration of navigating a crisis and surviving. Holding Amelia fell into the same category as steering the ship to safety. He had been able to do it because he _had to do it_. In safe, familiar surroundings… Without, in short, the danger of death… it was so much harder to know what to do.

Perhaps that’s why things were a bit fraught between them immediately after landing.

Amelia disappeared for a while into the world that spacers inhabit in between voyages. She would have had a lot of explaining to do to the port authorities, Delbert supposed. And that probably meant paperwork as well. Not to mention that she would be applying for a new commission…

Delbert kept his distance, but he didn’t leave the port. He needed time, he told himself, to think the problem through. Eventually he left Amelia a message asking her to dinner. Not a dinner as in dinner, of course… It would be something casual. Brunch, in fact. Nothing unusual in one friend asking another to brunch. A bite to eat and a little light copulation… Conversation! _Conversation_.

For some reason, completely unfathomable to Delbert, Amelia accepted. It would be dinner, however, she told him. And it would be in a nice little place where Amelia was a regular. A good place, with decent food. Some of the most respectable spacer scum in the port. Hardly any brawls at all.

 

The inn where Delbert and Amelia dined was not exactly to Delbert’s taste. There was the fact that he was too afraid to pick up his fork lest he do it in the wrong way and mistakenly offend one of the uniformly large spacers crowding the bar. There was also the food, which was not decent. Really, though, he knew that he could be in the finest restaurant this side of the Onyx Nebula and still be in agonies.

As soon as he had walked in, he had seen Amelia and known that he was lost to her irrevocably. She didn’t look an iota different to the day he met her. She hadn’t even bothered to wear anything but her uniform. (Did those buttons look brighter than usual? Possibly she had polished the buttons). Now he was almost certainly possibly sure that he might be falling in love with her, to see her looking exactly as she had always looked was enough to floor him. He wanted desperately to impress her, and as a result he could barely string together a sentence.

Amelia ended up doing most of the talking for both of them. It was hard work having a conversation on one’s own, but, then again, she found herself to be one of the best talkers she knew. She struggled bravely on until she had almost finished her meal. Delbert, she noticed, had barely eaten a forkful of his. She asked him another question, hoping that this time she would spark a discussion. He gave her another monosyllabic answer. That was when she knew she’d had enough.

“You don’t have much to say for yourself for once,” she snapped.

Delbert bristled.

“You seem to have even more to say than usual,” he retorted, hotly.

Then he noticed a frown flit across her face and he felt a pain in his heart. He stumbled over his words as he tried to apologise. He realised that he was probably making both of them very uncomfortable. The evening was going terribly. Casual, he had said. Women don’t like to be rushed. At least, theoretically – Delbert had never been an expert in what women did or didn’t want, although he had tried to get a handle on it a few times. He looked at his barely touched plate of food. Casual, he had said. But here he was, a sweating heap of nerves, making passive aggressive gibes at the woman he was almost certain he might possibly be in love with.

There was silence for an hour long moment.

“Look,” said Amelia at last, “Now seems as good a time as any to get down to brass tacks. I suppose you’re wondering why I asked you here.”

“Actually,” said Delbert, bitterly, now beyond hope, “I asked you here.”

Amelia made no indication that she had heard him. Instead, she continued: “I have a proposition for you, Doctor. I’ve been offered command of a cutter transporting solar crystals to the Catriona system.”

She paused, as if there were some significance for Delbert to take in. His heart sank even further. He was just about to muster up some congratulations when she began to speak again.

“I’ve taken the ship on the condition that I get to bring a few of my own people. I know you’re probably keen to get back to your books but I think your talents would be put to good use on this particular voyage.”

She looked away, pretending to take a sudden interest in the table’s salt-cellar. She added a breezy, “Well. There it is. Just thought I’d ask.”

Delbert blinked, stunned.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’m offering you a job, you buffoon,” Amelia said hotly, her face noticeably pink under the coat of fine fur.

“B-but what good would I be on a merchant ship?”

“Your knowledge of languages would be useful for a start. You have experience of sailing the Aether, you’re a decent-ish shot… Oh, and there was that time or two you saved my life. What do you think?”

“Yes,” said Delbert, barely allowing himself to process the question before speaking, “I think yes.”

 

***

 

On that day in the tavern, Delbert could not have guessed that two years later he would be married to the impossible woman he had dined with. Still less would he have predicted the litter of four that they were expecting. Yet, looking back on the past couple of years, those were possibly the least surprising events. The succession of commissions, from the first carrying that shipment of solar crystals to the latest, escorting a diplomatic envoy, had stretched Delbert’s conception of his own capabilities. He had harboured boyish dreams of such adventures, certainly, but he had never really considered them possible. He had accepted Amelia’s invitation to one voyage and then another, wondering at the turn his life had taken. Revelling in it as well. He knew, though, that he would have fled back home to Montressor long ago if it hadn’t been for a single overwhelming influence.

Every job he worked with Amelia allowed him to know her a little better.

 

Delbert prodded the bowl of Alponian chowder with his fork. He sniffed it delicately. Amelia rolled her eyes but she was far too used to Delbert’s lack of subtlety to be anything but amused.

“Hmm,” said Delbert, thoughtfully, “It certainly smells pernicious… Er, that is to say delicious. _Delicious_ is what I meant.”

He took a forkful and tasted it. It actually was delicious.

“You needn’t look so surprised,” said Amelia.

“No, no,” said Delbert, swallowing hurriedly, “It just struck me… How extraordinary you are.”

Amelia gave a barely suppressed smile which might as well have said, “Yes, go on.”

“It’s not everyone who can steer a ship out of the way of a supernova and cook a meal like this,” said Delbert.

“Someone has to,” Amelia said, blithely, “It might as well be me.”

She watched him eat with a sense of satisfaction and calm. Once he had finished she picked up the bowl from where it was balanced on his stomach. Looking to the narrow gap beside Delbert in the armchair she said, “Room for one more?”

Delbert did his best to make room for his wife in a chair that, before he was pregnant, had seemed unnecessarily large. Amelia slipped in and folded herself around him. She nuzzled her nose into the crook of his neck.

“I meant what I said, you know,” said Delbert softly, “You are the most extraordinary woman.”

He felt Amelia shake her head against his collar bone.

“And here I am, absolutely useless,” he added with a sigh.

Amelia raised her head.

“I’m sorry, my love, but the man who’s saved my life,” she made a theatrical mime of counting her fingers, “Three – no, four times has no right to say that. Besides which, you’re carrying our children. Oh, and I almost forgot that you gave up your life for the past how many years to traipse across the Aetherium after me.”

“Do you think that’s what I’ve been doing?” said Delbert, surprised.

Amelia didn’t want to tell him that, yes, she worried that she had been making him do something he didn’t want to somehow. She had been worried ever since that day in the space port tavern when she had been so uncertain of how to have a straightforward emotional conversation with him that she had made him a business proposal instead. These days she was better at letting herself be vulnerable with Delbert but it still took her a bit of effort sometimes.

“Amelia, let me make this clear. I didn’t give up anything to be with you.”

“It’s time to settle down now, though,” she said firmly, “You have your work here to think of.”

“Oh, I can write a book anywhere,” Delbert said.

“And this would be a good place to bring up children,” Amelia added.

“For some of the time,” Delbert said, looking at his wife thoughtfully, “Perhaps.”

“What do you mean?”

Delbert mustered the arguments he’d been forming ever since they had arrived home. He took a breath and said, “I’ve been thinking… Perhaps having a family doesn’t mean we have to abandon the life we’ve been living. I’ve become quite used to traipsing across the Aetherium with you. We’ve dealt with every challenge we’ve faced so far. And I think we work rather well together…”

Amelia nodded slowly, not wishing to influence her husband one way or another. She couldn’t help but feel a thrill of anticipation even so.

“I don’t think I’m ready to give up the life we have,” Delbert concluded.

Amelia clung to him again.

“I’m so glad,” she said, kissing him once, twice, three times, “I really am so glad.”

Delbert smiled sheepishly.

“You don’t mind?”

“Mind? I’m all for it.”

“I think it would be quite good for them. The children, that is,” Delbert placed a protective paw over his stomach as he said this, “To see the galaxy from a young age. There’s no better education than that.”

“We’ll have the house ready for them whenever we need it,” Amelia continued for him, “They’ll have that stability - we don’t have to be forever travelling.”

“Let’s do it.”

“Let’s show them the stars.”

 

Outside the library door, one maid asked another, “What is it? What are they saying?”

“Can’t quite make out,” said her companion with a shrug, “Something about the stars, travel, something like that… Sounds like she’ll be dragging him away again.”

They both peered through the gap in the door to get a glimpse of the master and mistress. However, they abruptly reeled around again as they heard a familiar sound. A robot cannot produce a subtle cough so, instead, the butler had a particular gentle clicking that he used to secure subordinates’ attention. He used it then.

“Beg your pardon, sir,” said one maid.

The other merely beeped nervously.

“We’ll have none of this idleness,” said the butler, with more fervour than either of the maids had seen him display before, “This house is a disgrace as it is.”

“We’re working as hard as we can,” said the first maid, sullenly.

The butler fixed her with a scrutinising lens.

“I hope so,” he said, firmly, “Because the Captain wants this place shipshape. From now on we are all to answer to the Captain.”

 

From her position in the library, comfortably enfolding her gently snoring husband, Amelia’s keen ears overheard the conversation outside. She smiled to herself, pleased with the day’s work.

She felt that she and Delbert had made a great first step on a new adventure.


End file.
